


I'll Follow You Into the Dark

by SunriseinSpace



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Girl!Arthur, Rule 63, Shaving, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunriseinSpace/pseuds/SunriseinSpace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you trust me?” she asks, hand warm on the back of his neck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Follow You Into the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Ostensibly, this is a 5 + 1, being 5 times Eames takes care of Arthur and 1 time she takes care of him. Or something like that.

_"Do you trust me?" she asks, hand warm on the back of his neck. He opens his mouth, a flip response waiting on his tongue, and her gaze sharpens. "Do you. Trust me?" He stills, staring up into her dark eyes, and remembers._

 +

"Eames, this is Gwenhwyfar Arthur, our new point. Don't do anything to make her leave - I want to keep this one. She's good," Dom says, by way of an introduction, walking the lithe young woman into the warehouse, then promptly exiting again. Mal had another doctor's appointment yesterday, with another one scheduled for this afternoon, and Eames understands Dom's terseness -- Philippa had been a hard pregnancy for Mal and everyone was taking extra measures to try to make this pregnancy better.

The door slams shut with a resounding crash and Eames winces at the echo, then smiles brilliantly at the new addition.

"Gwenhwyfar Arthur, huh? Parents big mythology buffs?"

"Gwenhwyfar was my grandmother's name," she says, her voice low and precise, while her eyes flash cool fire at him. He raises an eyebrow in response. "You can call me Arthur."

"Arthur," he purrs, rolling the last 'r', savoring it. He smirks at the faint blush that rises high on her cheeks.

That exchange sets the tone for their interactions. One would say something, the other'd snark back, and that would set them off until Dom called them to order. Eames knows it annoys Dom, has him afraid Arthur won't be willing to work with them again, but Eames is a people-watcher -- he's seen the flashes of amusement and interest in Arthur's eyes, knows that she enjoys their verbal duels as much as she's enjoying the dreaming. She'll always jump at the chance to dream like this, with or without Eames.

The job is straight forward, perfect for an introduction to the business, but Arthur's research reveals that the mark has sub-security training. When she announces this during one of their planning sessions, Cobb's eyes go flat and his mouth twists down into a frown. Eames, noticing this, comes to attention.

"Eames, I need you to teach her to shoot," he says. Arthur makes a protesting sound at this, but Dom won't be moved. "If she can't defend herself, she isn't going into the dream, and we need her in the dream. Teach her."

It's a chance to touch her, a chance to interact with her one-on-one, a chance to be the one imparting the knowledge, instead of the other way 'round. A chance to explore this new chemistry brewing between them.

So, of course, Eames agrees.

"I can do this, you know," she tells him later, hands on her hips, back perfectly straight, as they stand in the echoing brightness of the shooting range. A wisp of dark hair has come loose from her bun and is drifting softly against the side of her face. He wants to tuck it back out of the way. Instead he picks up the gun and hands it to her, butt first.

"Okay, show me what you've got."

She takes the gun, settles her stance, and fires off six quick shots, emptying the clip. While she proves she can properly reload the pistol, Eames reaches over and pushes the button to bring the target closer, studying the bullet holes in the card. She's done well for being, in his opinion, a beginner; all six shots hit not just the card, but are also within the outlines of the 'person'. None of the shots, however, would ultimately be fatal which, for their purposes, isn't good enough.

"Perfectly adequate for a first attempt," he says, deliberately condescending. He loves when her eyes snap fire; plus, Arthur angry equals Arthur fucking deadly, even without a weapon in her hands. He wants her sharp and focused and if he has to rile her up to get her there... "If you were to do this, though," he says, moving behind her. She jumps, whirling to keep him in front of her, hands raised slightly. They stand for a moment, her dark eyes on his face as he watches the play of emotions on her face. Finally, he nods and verbally outlines the changes she needs to make.

She goes through two more clips, her shots getting a little better each time, but they're still not perfect yet and her expression tells him she knows it as well as he does.

"Let's try something else," he says eventually and steps closer. She watches him with wary eyes and he has to wonder what's made her so suspicious of his attentions, whether it extends to everyone, or to every man, or if it's just him. He raises his hands. "Do you trust me?" he asks, as serious as he's ever been.

Her eyes are large and dark and she swallows nervously but nods acquiescence.

He presses himself to her from shoulder to hip, knees bent up behind hers to force her into the correct stance. He curves his arms around hers, adjusts her grip and her posture, pulling and pushing until she's standing the way he wants her to.

"Now," he says, soft against her ear. The hair on the back of her neck rises into gooseflesh and he's struck with the urge to press his lips to the delicate skin behind her ear. He resists, understanding the fragility of the situation, reading her tension in the stiffness of her frame. "Align the sights and apply even pressure; don't yank the trigger." With his arms guiding hers and his chest pressed to her back, his hands around hers on the pistol, she pulls the trigger. He feels her minute flinch, uses the breadth of his shoulders to steady her against the recoil, but otherwise doesn't influence her follow-through.

When he brings the card closer, there's a perfect bullet hole in the figure's forehead.

+

It’s just over a year before he has an opportunity to work with Arthur and the Cobbs again and, when he walks into the warehouse appropriated as their headquarters for the job, he can nearly taste the difference in the air.

Mal is a listless shadow in one corner of the open space, chin in her hand as she stares blankly out a window. Arthur and Dom move quietly around her, obviously leery of disturbing her, though Dom’s body language suggests there’s nothing he’d like better than to shake his wife back to alertness. After two hours of watching them dance careful circles around the silent woman in the corner, Eames catches Arthur’s eye and nods toward the door, holding up his disposable coffee-cup in invitation. Her eyes go wide with something like relief and he follows her out of the warehouse.

He manages to wait until they’re settled at a table with their drinks to ask.

“They went too deep,” Arthur says, dark eyes unreadable as she plays with her cup. “They went too deep and when they woke up... Dom knows they’re awake, he was the one in the dream to convince her they had to wake up. But Mal...” Her eyes are bleak as she looks up at him. “Mal still thinks she’s dreaming.”

Eames sits silent, sipping his coffee, as he processes this, takes in the hopelessness of the situation. Then he reaches out and squeezes Arthur’s hand, once, pulling his own back before she can jerk away.

Days in the warehouse are tense, filled with a quiet sense of foreboding, of anticipation. Eames has been dreaming professionally for years, since before he left the military, and he has never seen a dreamer come back from something like this. A person who doesn’t believe they’re awake will do anything to escape the dream, no matter what anyone says. He knows it’s only a matter of time.

Something tells him Arthur, for all of her relative inexperience, knows it, too.

They enter the dreamscape easily, Dom and Eames going off with the mark, coaxing him into revealing the secret they’ve come for, while Arthur draws off the projections. They aren’t militarized, but it’s obvious, in the few glimpses Eames gets of her working, that Arthur’s gained more than a little confidence in her abilities and with more weapons than a handgun. It’s when the mark leads Cobb into his executive office to discuss the expansion plans they were meant to extract that things go abruptly pear-shaped. The secretary leaps to her feet, wielding a letter opener like a dagger, and Eames bolts for the door, knowing instinctively that he has to find Arthur, the dreamer, as soon as possible - she may be better, faster, stronger than when she started, but the mark’s a cruel man. There’s no telling what his subconscious will do to her.

By the time Eames finds her, the projections have her cornered on the roof of a skyscraper. He shouts her name and steps back into his skin, meeting her eyes over the heads of the mob as he runs in her direction.

“Arthur!” he calls, dreaming a gun into his hands as he hits the edge of the crowd. The veneer of calm over her face is starting to crack, her hair tumbling down over her face, as a particularly burly projection grabs a hold of both of her arms, wrenching her around and holding her out to the mob. “Arthur!” He can’t get any closer, projections milling wildly around him, pinning him in place as effectively as the meaty paws restraining Arthur.

“Eames!” she cries, voice cracking, as two projections pull switchblades out of their pockets, snapping them open with manic anticipation.

“Do you trust me?” he shouts over the crowd’s din, releasing the safety on his pistol. From here, with her height, he can’t get a clean shot at her. The behemoth with his hands all over her, however...

“Yes!” It’s a shriek of pained terror, as the projections lunge forward again, and he wastes no time taking his shot.

She screams again when the projection holding her abruptly tumbles backward, his (literal) death grip on her arms dragging her over the edge of the roof with the momentum of the bullet to the forehead. He only waits for the sound to cut off and the first rumble of the dream collapsing, then he shoots himself, hoping Cobb managed to get the plans despite everything.

Her eyes are quietly grateful as she pulls the cannula from his wrist and spools up the tubing, though her hands shake and she’s paler than usual. He nods and offers a small smile, before garnering a promise of payment from Cobb and hightailing it out of town.

+

Four months later, he jerks awake in the middle of the night, hand flying to grab the cell phone buzzing on the nightstand.

“Mal jumped,” Arthur says when he answers it. Her voice is nothing more than a monotone, flat and heavy in his ear. “They think Dom did it.” He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face.

“I’ll be there tomorrow evening,” he tells her.

“Thank you,” she whispers and ends the call.

When he knocks on Cobb’s front door seventeen hours, several planes, and one extended layover later, Arthur’s the one that answers it, two year old James in her arms, his face tucked against her shoulder. Philippa’s clinging to Arthur’s leg, her eyes wide and luminous as she stares up at Eames. Without stopping to think, he crouches down to her level, dropping his bag on the porch and reaching out to the little girl.

“Hey, darling, come here,” he says and, with a sob, Philippa runs into his arms. She latches on to his neck, grip tight on his shirt, as he rises back to his feet. Arthur gives him a tired half-smile and shifts to allow him through the doorway.

With Uncle Eames there to placate them, the children willingly go straight to bed, worn out with confusion and grief. Eames stays perched on the edge of Philippa’s bed, stroking her baby-fine blonde hair, until she falls asleep. Only then does he leave her room, yawning his own exhaustion, to search for Arthur.

She’s in the kitchen, hair down and spilling loose around her shoulders, clad in a long t-shirt and a pair of black leggings as she studies the papers and folders spread out on the kitchen counter.

“Where’s Cobb?” Eames asks, finally voicing the question burning on the tip of his tongue since entering the house.

“Gone,” she says, still in the same flat tone. There are dark circles under her eyes and her shoulders are bowed, sagging under the weight of postponing her grief. She may not have known the Cobbs as long as Eames has, but Mal had been a truly wonderful person, with a charming personality that drew people in and held them close. “South America, I think. I told him not to tell me and I haven’t had the time to look.” She’s so worn looking; it hurts him to look at her.

“Arthur,” he says softly, rounding the counter to put an arm around her shoulders. She sags against him, turning her face into his chest, but doesn’t allow herself to be pulled away from her paperwork.

“I need to take care of this,” she protests, reaching back for a folder. It’s something medical, with Mal’s name printed in the corner, but Arthur’s hand shakes as she lifts it and it makes something in Eames’ chest clench.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, taking the folder from her and tipping her chin up until she looks him in the eye. Her lips fall open, just slightly, and her eyes dart down to focus briefly on his mouth.

“Yes,” she whispers and allows him to pull her out of the kitchen and up to the guest bedroom.

He tucks her into bed and crawls in behind her, holding her comfortingly close in the darkness of the room. Outside the window, crickets sing their nightly tune and he lets himself drift to the sound, waiting out Arthur’s stubbornness. Eventually, just as he’s on the cusp of sleep, he feels the bed shift as Arthur shudders, gasping a ragged breath. Gently, he pulls her into his arms, tucking her safe against his chest as she allows herself to cry.

+

“Is there really any need to take this into the dreamscape?” Ariadne asks some three years later, as they’re gathered in a semi-circle and brainstorming for the job.

“Nooo,” Eames concedes, flipping through the packet Arthur had compiled on the mark and considering their options. “Here,” he says, pointing out a date on the schedule, “he’s hosting a gala event at the Grand this weekend. I could ‘acquire’ an invitation and attend, posing as a potential buyer,” he offers and the group falls silent for a moment as they think this over.

“That could work,” Cobb agrees. Ariadne nods.

“Just you?” Arthur asks, her chair tipped back on two legs as she flips through her notes. “He’s single right now,” she points out, “just ended a long-term relationship.” She holds up a photo of a sleek brunette. “You can’t forge in real life; what if he won’t talk to a buyer but will to a pretty girl?”

Eames sees where she’s going with this and it’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her ‘no’. But then he takes a second look at her expression, sees the challenge in her eyes and smiles.

“Of course, darling. I’d love to take you to the ball,” he quips. She glares at him and sniffs disdainfully, rocking delicately back and forth on the two working legs of her chair.

Three nights later, he stands in front of her hotel room, one newly minted invitation for one ‘Joshua Howard and date’ snugly nested in his pocket. He adjusts the lapels of his jacket and knocks on her door.

“It’s open!” he hears and takes that as permission to enter.

“Almost ready?” he asks, strolling into the suite, leaning to see around the bedroom doorway.

“Yes, I just--” Arthur stops in the doorway for a moment, barefoot, hair loose, and only mostly dressed, trying to fasten one earring. “My manicure ran over,” she explains, swinging her hair over her shoulder to fasten the other earring. Eames smiles and steps into the room.

Her dress is unzipped down to her waist, the creamy skin of her back deliciously framed by the dress’ dark fabric. As he watches, leaning against a nearby wall, she twists and contorts, trying and failing to find the zipper pull. She gives it one more try, then huffs in frustration, burying her hands in her hair and pausing for a second to just breathe.

“God, I hate being late,” she mumbles and he pushes himself off the wall.

“Let me help,” he offers. Her eyes snap to his face, narrowed with a question. He holds his hands up innocently. “Trust me,” he says and she rolls her eyes.

“Whatever.” She gestures over her shoulder and turns to allow him to zip her dress.

The zipper is tiny in his fingers, almost vanishing into the fabric of the dress, and he trails his fingers over the smooth skin of her back under the pretense of easing the zipper’s slide to the top. There’s a slight blush coloring her neck as he reaches around her for her necklace, fastening it around her neck easily and tweaking the chain ‘til it lies just right against her skin.

There’s a mirror over the dresser and he turns her to face it, picking up her hairbrush and running it through her hair in a series of steady strokes. She melts slightly against his chest while he does this, eyes drifting half-shut, and he smiles, half-expecting her to purr. With a series of twists and a few pins, he fixes her hair for her, the style something sleek and slightly demure, while sturdy enough to stay put if she needs it to. He settles his hands on her shoulders, thumbs stroking softly over the skin bared by her dress, and gives into an old impulse, pressing a quick kiss to the side of her neck. Her eyes pop open and she stares hotly at their reflection in the mirror, her smaller frame fitting neatly inside his wide shoulders.

“Ready, darling?” he asks, his voice low and husky, and she nods, reaching to apply a small amount of perfume to her pulse-points and grab the small black clutch waiting on the dresser.

When he leads her into the Grand’s ballroom, every eye in the place focuses on them, then lingers on her and Eames instinctively knows that every woman in the room wants to be her and every man wants to be with her. It’s him they don’t know how to deal with.

He smiles a secret smile and lets them guess.

+

“God-fucking-dammit,” Arthur gasps, hunched over the bathroom counter, trying to twist herself enough to be able to tend to the gash sweeping over her right shoulderblade. Eames, caught in a rare moment of worry for her, hovers in the doorway. “Christ, I hate shallow wounds.”

“Need a hand?”

“I’ve got it, I’ve just gotta--ah!” Her eyes clench shut as the slice pulls, seeping blood, bright against her pale skin.

“Arthur, darling, trust me,” he says, gentle hands on her shoulders. She lets her head hang for a moment, then nods, hair swinging.

As carefully as he can, he sponges away the blood, aware of every wince and gasp Arthur makes in the process. Clean, he can see it’s just a flesh wound, deep enough to hurt like a bitch, but too shallow to require stitches. He reaches into the cabinet over the toilet and pulls out the first aid kit, digging into it until he finds the gauze pads and tape.

“Hold on,” he warns and she curls her hands around the marble of the countertop.

“Fucking Robbins,” she swears, a tear slipping free to streak down her cheek, dragging a line of mascara with it, as Eames swipes disinfectant over the injury. “That’s the last time I work with someone I know for a fact was friends with Nash,” she promises through gritted teeth. “They’re all alike - crap architects, the lot of them.”

“Shh,” Eames hushes, brushing a gentle hand over the nape of her neck. “You know Ariadne’s only weeks away from finishing her degree. She and Dom swore up and down they wouldn’t work with any point but you. It’ll work out.”

“It better,” Arthur vows. “Or I’ll do the wet work myself.”

Eames chuckles at the ire in her tone and smooths the last piece of tape into place. He helps her into the button-down she’s been sleeping in recently, smiling softly as she snuggles her face into the collar of the shirt. It’s one of his old ones, washed to buttery softness, and the pleasure he takes in seeing her in his clothes is closely followed by the amusement he has at her fascination with his scent.

It’s closer to morning than night when they finally settle into bed, Arthur curled carefully so that her wounded shoulder isn’t bothered by Eames’ arms wrapped around her. Her hand smooths over his stomach, gentle and almost teasing over his bare skin as she traces his tattoos, but they’re both too worn out to do anything other than lazily exchange kisses, letting the bed cradle their tired bodies.

“Goodnight, darling,” he says eventually, when his eyelids are too heavy to keep open any longer. She presses a quick kiss over his heart, relaxing against his side with her head pillowed on his chest.

“Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.”

+

_“Eames. Do you trust me?” Her voice is still perfectly patient, but there’s something anxious brewing in her eyes._

_“I do trust you,” he says quietly and it settles heavily into the air between them, sinking into his bones like a promise. A bright smile spreads across her face, making her eyes shine as any and all anxiety disappears._

_She leans down to press a quick kiss to his lips, then tilts his head back, baring his throat. The blade of the old-fashioned straight razor glints in the light as she brings it to settle against his chin. A shiver runs down his spine as she lingers there for a second, the metal cool against his skin. Her eyes flare hot and predatory and her mouth curves into a lioness’ smile. A frisson of arousal spikes through him, slamming into his gut like a linebacker, and her smile turns wicked as she draws the blade across his skin, carefully scraping away soap and stubble. Her attention to detail nearly undoes him, breaks him to pieces under her hands, as she devotes herself to her task._

_“Do you trust me?” she breathes against his ear, once the soap is wiped away from his skin and she’s hovering over his lap. She touches the blade of the razor lightly to his neck and the coolness of the metal flashes sparks off the heat of his need for her. He latches hands around her waist and slams her down onto him, her back arching as he slides home in one thrust._

_“Yes,” he groans against her neck and her breathy laughter fills the air around them._


End file.
